1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to setting in a wireless communication device for encrypted communication.
2. Description of the Related Art
A wireless LAN (local area network) has widely been used to connect multiple devices including computers, printers, and projectors by wireless communication. Wireless communication devices using radio waves for wireless communication are generally used in the wireless LAN. Encrypted communication is typically adopted in the wireless LAN to prevent leakage of data to the third person. The wireless LAN requires settings of various parameters for network connection to establish wireless communication between the wireless communication devices. The wireless LAN also requires settings of key information for encryption and decryption in the respective wireless communication devices to establish encrypted communication. Hereafter the settings of the various parameters and the settings of the key information are collectively referred to as setting information.
In the case of connection of a new wireless communication device to an existing wireless LAN, the new wireless communication device is required to input the setting information of the existing wireless LAN. In the case of a change in setting information for the security purpose, all the wireless communication devices connected to the wireless LAN are required to update the setting information. In a general procedure, the user individually inputs and updates the setting information in these wireless communication devices. Such input and update are rather time and labor consuming. Especially in a wireless LAN including a large number of wireless communication devices, the user has extremely heavy workload.
Various techniques have been proposed to relieve the user's workload. For example, the technique disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open Gazette No. 2003-338821 sends setting information from one wireless communication device with the setting information to another wireless communication device without the setting information by default setting wireless communication and enables another wireless communication device to set the received setting information.
This proposed technique establishes default setting wireless communication to send the setting information by non-encrypted communication. This method has the relatively poor security level since there is a possibility that the transmission contents are leaked to the third person.